About

Founded by award-winning travel journalist Jenny Southan in 2015, Globetrender is an online magazine and trend forecasting agency dedicated to the future of travel.

Are you prepared for the needs and desires of Generation Z? How about Generation Alpha?

Trend forecasting is essential for informing your business decisions, reducing risks and inspiring new ways of thinking, as the world around you is in a constant state of flux.

Trend forecasters are the watchmen and watchwomen of change.

We look at how small shifts (micro trends) are contributing to the bigger picture (macro trends): from ayahuasca retreats to transformational travel; plant-based menus to vegan tourism; voice-activated hotel rooms to artificial intelligence.

We are always on the look out for innovation, what’s cool, what’s new and what’s different. These stories are given a platform on our consumer-facing website, which is free for anyone to read without interference from advertising.

Globetrender focuses on leisure travel and the booming freelance economy, which allows people to work remotely from wherever they like in the world.

In 2017, Globetrender was shortlisted for “Online Consumer Publication of the Year” in the Travel Media Awards.

Travel is one of the world’s biggest industries – and it’s only going to get bigger.

Leisure travel spending is expected to rise by 4.1 per cent per annum to US$6.6 trillion in 2028.

Business travel spending is expected to rise by 3.2 per cent per annum to US$1.7 trillion in 2028.

How can Globetrender help you thrive in this ever-competitive market?

Globetrender foresight services

Globetrender offers bespoke trend forecasting and research services to inspire, inform and guide you in your decision-making.

Our trend reports – both surface skimming and deep dives – are based on strategic intuition, in-depth journalistic research into what’s new within the industry, expert interviews, observation of the changing needs and desires of consumers, hard data from multiple sources and cross-cultural analysis.

We have set our sights on what is going on in the early stages of adoption so that the information we deliver feels fresh and you have time to act on it. Equally, it is embedded enough that it is solid and reliable, not just flimsy future-gazing.

If you are interested in a bespoke report or you would like an individual consultation on how to ready yourself for the next decade, email editor and founder Jenny Southan. Equally, if you would like to sponsor one of our publicly available reports, do get in touch.

Methodology

How does a trend start? The lifecycle of a trend moves from the innovators that trigger them on the minority fringes, on to the early adopters, early majority, late majority and, finally, the laggards and anti-innovators, again at the periphery.

When searching for patterns as evidence of a new trend, trend forecasters apply the “three times” rule. A one-time occurrence is an anomaly, twice is a coincidence and three times is a trend.

Trend forecasting begins with a hunch – expert intuition is an important part of wayfinding.

This means trend forecasters need both logic and instinct.

Just like news reporters, we always ask the “who”, “what”, “where”, “why” and “when”? But like investigative journalists, we then dive much deeper into the subject.

Trend forecasters are curators of “stuff”.

By discovering multiple examples of a trend, “qualitative” (rather than quantitative) proof of it is generated. It’s not a science but it isn’t so dissimilar to coming up with a hypothesis in a laboratory that scientists then conduct tests to prove (or disprove).

“The only real valuable thing is intuition,” said Albert Einstein.

For example, Globetrender hears from a PR that a luxury travel company is selling tours of Iceland with a professional drone pilot (“a world first”) who will make a feature film of people’s adventures.

Innovation is at the root of every trend but we need evidence that other companies are offering similar services before we can say “drone holidays” are a trend. More research is required.

We apply further rigour to the process by investigating the drivers, consequences and implications of the trend. We sometimes build complex visual “cartograms” of images and words to map this, especially when exploring macro trends.